USFS reports & data

Recent studies suggest that climate change has altered the flow and provision of water from western US rivers to downstream cities and natural communities, but fewer studies have examined hydrological influences related to a century of fire suppression. This study evaluated the effects of changing forest and temperature conditions on 20th century flow patterns in the Salt River in central Arizona. Seasonal and annual flows declined by 8-29% in the first half of the century which coincided with a 10-fold increase in ponderosa pine forest densities. Based on a scientific review, there is strong evidence that changes in forest structure contributed to these flow declines. In the 2nd half of the century, warmer temperatures led to earlier timing of peak spring flows of almost 2 weeks but had negligible direct effects on flow magnitudes. These results suggest that forest change had effects on flow well before anthropogenic warming and that large-scale restoration projects hold some promise of recovering seasonal flows.

With over two million acres of Arizona’s forests vulnerable to catastrophic wildfire, we must change how we manage forests to reduce this risk. Accelerating the pace and scale of forest restoration treatments to meet this challenge requires new ways of doing business. Today’s forest management requires a collaborative approach between the Forest Service, wood product industries, and organizations like The Nature Conservancy to modernize rules and regulations; test, develop, and use new technology to work smarter and faster at less cost; and forge innovative partnerships that provide the support needed for this transformation. The Nature Conservancy is developing new technology that help harvesters, the Forest Service, and stakeholders meet today’s forest restoration goals. Using satellite and 3D imagery, geographic information systems, and electronic tablets, our efforts show promise in creating efficient, less-costly methods to digitally “mark” trees, prepare sites for treatments, harvest trees, and monitor effects of treatments.

The Coronado National Forest’s FireScape program works to remove barriers to fire playing its natural role on the landscape. The FireScape team is nurturing multiple efforts around the Sky Islands—no two projects are alike, but those underway share an approach that includes multiple jurisdictions, investigations by University of Arizona scientists, public engagement, assessing treatment need at the whole-mountain scale, and creatively removing implementation barriers when funding is scarce. See also the Southwest Forest Assessment page.

This regional assessment examines the impacts of temperature change from 1951-2006 on natural resources in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah. It documents that warming has already affected habitats, watersheds, and species in the Southwest, by influencing the timing of seasonal events or amplifying the impacts of natural disturbances such as wildfire and drought. The report concludes that to begin adapting to climate change, natural resource managers should reevaluate the effectiveness of current restoration tools, modify resource objectives, learn from climate-smart adaptive management and monitoring, and share information across boundaries.

The White Mountains Stewardship Project on the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest in Arizona was designed to reduce the impacts of wildfires on communities, improve wildlife habitat, and help stimulate employment in the wood products industry. A multi-party monitoring board was convened to design a program for evaluating project effectiveness. This report summarizes results from five years of data on economic, social, administrative, and ecological indicators and provides recommendations for improving program effectiveness moving forward.

Descriptions of the Historical Range of Variation or Variability (HRV) characterize the change over time and space in the condition of the Southwest’s major vegetation types and the ecological processes that shape those types. HRVs enable land managers and the public to understand the drivers of change in our region’s major vegetation types.

All of the reports and data sets developed for the Southwest Forest Assessment Project were subjected to external peer review to ensure conformance with the Forest Service’s Science Consistency Review Standards. This report includes a complete list of the resource professionals who reviewed the various components of this project.

Ecosystem diversity reports were developed to support the Forest Service’s need for information on the species and ecosystems that occur on National Forests in Region 3. The reports contain data summaries and analyses of a variety of regional datasets. Each report is packaged with an introduction and chapters describing methods and data sources.

Brief overview describing a collaborative effort between The Nature Conservancy and U.S. Forest Service Region 3 in Arizona and New Mexico, a project designed to develop scientific information for forest plan revisions and to help in the restoration of ecosystems.

Synthesizes the scientific literature on historical fire return intervals associated with the major vegetation systems across Arizona and New Mexico. Included is a crosswalk table for use with the Southwest Regional Gap Analysis Project’s land cover dataset and three ArcGIS layer (.lyr) files that enable the user to mimic the report graphics.

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